Swift County Monitor News - Opinionshttp://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/opinions
enIs A ‘Farce and Tragedy’ Unfolding?http://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/2019/09/11/%E2%80%98farce-and-tragedy%E2%80%99-unfolding
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Reed Anfinson<br />
Publisher<br />
Swift County Monitor-News</p>
<p>Founding Father James Madison said: “A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to farce or tragedy or perhaps both.” We fear the farce and tragedy are unfolding.</p>
<p>
President Thomas Jefferson also saw a real danger in the general population becoming disengaged from what their leaders were up to and where that could inevitably lead us.</p>
<p>
“If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves,” the nation’s third president wrote.</p>
<p>
In a piece she wrote on “The Role of Civic Education” in American democracy in 1998, Margaret S. Branson of the Center for Civic Education highlighted how essential an engaged and knowledgeable citizenry is to the future of our republic.</p>
<p>
“As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out, each new generation is a new people that must acquire the knowledge, learn the skills, and develop the dispositions or traits of private and public character that undergird a constitutional democracy,” she wrote. “Those dispositions must be fostered and nurtured by word and study and by the power of example. Democracy is not a ‘machine that would go of itself,’ but must be consciously reproduced, one generation after another.”</p>
<p>
Civic education is fundamental to the nurturing of a citizen’s informed participation. “Civic education, therefore, is or should be a prime concern,” Branson wrote. “There is no more important task than the development of an informed, effective, and responsible citizenry.”</p>
<p>
We see two dangers in where we are headed today if the fears of Madison and Jefferson are to be avoided. First, we aren’t teaching a new generation of citizens how to be good citizens, and second, they are getting less of the information that informs their decisions.</p>
<p>
Our world overflows with information, but so much of it is personal communication between friends and family over social media, or entertainment, or politically charged and slanted broadcasts on television and the internet. The news that is the sustenance of an informed electorate, the news that nurtures the knowledge we need about the quality of our elected leaders and where they are leading us is becoming ever harder to find.</p>
<p>
In our distant past, Americans were joiners. They belonged in high numbers to a wide range of social and political organizations. However, we have been turned inward by a succession of marvelous innovations through past decades. Radio, television, and the internet have isolated us away from social interaction and participation. Once homes had front porches so that people could look out to the street and socialize with their neighbors living next door, or with folks walking down the road.</p>
<p>
We were turned inside to huddle beside the radio, then to gather as a family in front of the television to watch the evening news. In time, each member of the family went off to his or her own TV room to watch a program in solitude. Then the internet came along further isolating us in our individualized worlds.</p>
<p>
We have stopped joining social clubs, stopped participating in organized sports on evenings and weekends, and stopped joining political groups. In our participation, we learned something about leadership and cooperation. We built ties with people from different social, financial and religious backgrounds. We learned to compromise. We served as officers of clubs. We helped write rules that were fairly applied and followed by our groups. We learned the habits of democracy without realizing we were honing our skills as citizens.</p>
<p>
Now the organizations that once were teeming with engaged residents of a community, the softball teams and bowling leagues, school parent groups, Kiwanis and Lions clubs, and community committees are dwindling if not gone.</p>
<p>
“Democracies are sustained by citizens who have the requisite knowledge, skills, and dispositions,” Branson wrote just over 20 years ago. “Absent a reasoned commitment on the part of its citizens to the fundamental values and principles of democracy, a free and open society cannot succeed.”</p>
<p>
The “skills and dispositions” have faded. Now our knowledge is threatened. Nowhere is this truer than in rural America.</p>
<p>
Branson’s words lay the foundation and imperative for supporting community newspapers in America. It is through our persistent presence and reporting that citizens in small communities across the country are informed. Only through sleepless vigilance do we keep corruption at bay and our freedoms safe. Journalists are democracy’s watchdogs, but so malnourished today that Jefferson’s wolves look on with contempt or disregard.</p>
<p>
So far, newspapers have been dealing with the loss of revenue through cuts – cuts in staff, cuts in content, cuts in coverage. They’ve tried to offset lost print revenues through their digital content, but the digital pennies don’t come close to making up for the print dollar advertising lost - so the cuts go deeper, and newspapers go out of business.</p>
<p>
A 2018 University of North Carolina study found that the United States had lost nearly 1,800 newspapers with more than 1,700 weeklies and 60 dailies gone since 2004. Communities throughout rural America are gradually becoming news deserts.</p>
<p>
With the internet taking away advertising that supports journalism, with the public turning to free entertainment and news on the internet and dropping their newspaper subscriptions, the responsibility to support how our citizens are informed will eventually go back to its roots – where society recognized the essential need to sustain journalism that educates the electorate. How we will do that is a subject of considerable debate, but one we must have.</p>
<p>
Americans must understand that newspapers are a public good, much like our educational system, our roads and bridges, our water systems, and our national defense.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-rate field-type-fivestar field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Rate this article:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><form class="fivestar-widget" action="/taxonomy/term/5/feed" method="post" id="fivestar-custom-widget" accept-charset="UTF-8"><div><div class="clearfix fivestar-average-text fivestar-average-stars fivestar-form-item fivestar-default"><div class="form-item form-type-fivestar form-item-vote">
<div class="form-item form-type-select form-item-vote">
<select id="edit-vote--2" name="vote" class="form-select"><option value="-">Select rating</option><option value="20">Give it 1/5</option><option value="40">Give it 2/5</option><option value="60">Give it 3/5</option><option value="80">Give it 4/5</option><option value="100">Give it 5/5</option></select>
<div class="description"><div class="fivestar-summary fivestar-summary-average-count"><span class="average-rating">Average: <span>5</span></span> <span class="total-votes">(<span>1</span> vote)</span></div></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><input class="fivestar-submit form-submit" type="submit" id="edit-fivestar-submit" name="op" value="Rate" /><input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" value="form-2UrOB3o15mKUTHz1ODht6w0h3nhzk0-VFI2TFZ_simg" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="fivestar_custom_widget" />
</div></form></div></div></div>Wed, 11 Sep 2019 16:33:53 +0000admin4015 at http://swiftcountymonitor.comAmazon’s Dominance Not Good For Small Townshttp://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/2019/09/06/amazon%E2%80%99s-dominance-not-good-small-towns
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Reed Anfinson<br />
Publisher<br />
Swift County Monitor-News</p>
<p>We recently met a driver for UPS while dining out who gave us some insight into just how pervasive Amazon’s sales are in rural Minnesota. He said that 60 percent of the deliveries he makes are Amazon packages. Now multiply that percentage across rural Minnesota and rural America. It will give you some insight into the online retailer’s dominance and growing impact on the health of small businesses.</p>
<p>
Amazon isn’t content with its current market share and what it offers customers. It wants to grow. It seeks to overwhelm its competitors, large and small. It wants to spread from retail, to groceries. It seeks to replace UPS and FedEx with its own delivery system.</p>
<p>
It is stunning to realize just how vast its retail empire has become. It is troubling to think of how it could eventually destroy main street retail sales in small town America. Nearly every retail item we buy can be purchased from our phone, laptop, tablet or desktop computer. It is then delivered to our house a day or two later -for free.</p>
<p>
Walmart, Target, Menards, and Home Depot, and other big box stores have already done a number on small town business and continue to draw our residents through their doors. Now it appears it is their turn to take a hit. Walmart has closed at least 17 of its stores in the U.S. and Canada. It recently announced the closing of its only super center in St. Paul in September. Of course, those closings don’t put much of a dent in its more than 4,700 stores in the United States.</p>
<p>
Now we know President Trump doesn’t like Amazon’s owner Jeff Bezos, and what and who Trump doesn’t like, his cabinet members make their targets as well. However, once and awhile, in rare instances, their targets become aligned with our needs.</p>
<p>
Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post, a newspaper that has often written stories raising questions about the ethics, competence, and policies of the Trump Administration. It is among the newspapers he repeatedly calls an “enemy of the people.” It keeps a tally of how many misleading statements, fabrication of facts, and outright lies Trump has told since taking office in January 2017. That total is now over 12,000.</p>
<p>
In going after Bezos’ Amazon, his administration may be helping out small retailers throughout the country. In July, he asked his Justice of Department to look into the dominance Amazon has in the retail online sector and its impact on brick and mortar businesses.</p>
<p>
“I think if you look at Amazon, although there are certain benefits to it, they’ve destroyed the retail industry across the United States, so there’s no question they’ve limited competition,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said during an interview on CNBC. “There’s areas where they’ve really hurt small businesses.”</p>
<p>
Amazon, of course, argues that it is good for small businesses citing all those it acts as a vendor for as it channels their products through its web site. “Today, independent sellers make up more than 58 percent of physical gross merchandise sales on Amazon, and their sales have grown twice as fast as our own, totaling $160 billion in 2018,” an Amazon spokeswoman told The Washington Post. She doesn’t mention how much of the share of that small businesses’ income Amazon siphons off. The statement also doesn’t acknowledge the impact on those businesses that don’t become part of the Amazon “team.” In rural Minnesota, those small businesses are often too small to get any benefit from an Amazon partnership – they simply see their customers siphoned off by the online giant.</p>
<p>
Amazon’s threat to the health of America’s retail sector isn’t just to small towns. Here are a few of the businesses Amazon could eventually put out of business, according to the Kiplinger newsletter:<br />
- Advance Auto Parts, AutoZone, O’Reilly Automotive<br />
- Albertsons, Kroger, Walmart Grocery<br />
- Barnes &amp; Noble, Joseph-Beth Booksellers<br />
- Best Buy<br />
- Etsy<br />
- FedEx, United Parcel Service<br />
- Jo-Ann Fabrics<br />
- Lululemon, Athletica, Under Armour<br />
- Office Depot, Staples<br />
- Pandora, Spotify<br />
- Sears<br />
- Trader Joe’s<br />
- Target.</p>
<p>
Back in March 2017, Rex Nutting of Market Watch wrote that Amazon could destroy more American jobs that China did with its cheap manufacturing costs of everything from clothing to steel.</p>
<p>
“For retail workers, Amazon is a grave threat,” he wrote. “Just ask the 10,100 workers who are losing their jobs at Macy’s. Or the 4,000 at The Limited. Or the thousands of workers at Sears and Kmart, which just announced 150 stores will be closing. Or the 125,000 retail workers who’ve been laid off over the past two years.”</p>
<p>
He points out that employment at retail department stores in America has “plunged by 250,000 since 2012. Employment at clothing and electronics stores is down sharply from the earlier peaks as more sales move online.” That was more than two years ago, and the steady declines have continued.</p>
<p>
Some may think that the jobs lost to Amazon and other online retailers will simply be picked up by those businesses. That isn’t the case, he said. “Amazon needs about half as many workers to sell $100 worth of merchandise as Macy’s does. Macy’s has floor walkers, and saleswomen at the makeup counter to give personal attention, and cashiers, if you can find one,” he writes. “By contrast, Amazon has ‘pickers’ in warehouses who grab hundreds of items off the shelves every hour.”</p>
<p>
But how long will those jobs last as Amazon researches to robotize the tasks pickers are now doing? Meanwhile, Amazon continues to grow with its percentage of the retail market steadily rising.</p>
<p>
For small town America’s way of life to not just thrive, but survive, the residents of those communities are going to have to develop a sense of loyalty to their local merchants.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-rate field-type-fivestar field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Rate this article:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><form class="fivestar-widget" action="/taxonomy/term/5/feed" method="post" id="fivestar-custom-widget--2" accept-charset="UTF-8"><div><div class="clearfix fivestar-average-text fivestar-average-stars fivestar-form-item fivestar-default"><div class="form-item form-type-fivestar form-item-vote">
<div class="form-item form-type-select form-item-vote">
<select id="edit-vote--4" name="vote" class="form-select"><option value="-">Select rating</option><option value="20">Give it 1/5</option><option value="40">Give it 2/5</option><option value="60">Give it 3/5</option><option value="80">Give it 4/5</option><option value="100">Give it 5/5</option></select>
<div class="description"><div class="fivestar-summary fivestar-summary-average-count"><span class="average-rating">Average: <span>4.8</span></span> <span class="total-votes">(<span>24</span> votes)</span></div></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><input class="fivestar-submit form-submit" type="submit" id="edit-fivestar-submit--2" name="op" value="Rate" /><input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" value="form-L3x4-ixHySRImKuqgWc3QwbiK8mWyFIPgNutx8AQpPE" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="fivestar_custom_widget" />
</div></form></div></div></div>Fri, 06 Sep 2019 16:09:04 +0000admin4000 at http://swiftcountymonitor.comYes, You Have A Right To Be At That Meetinghttp://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/2019/08/27/yes-you-have-right-be-meeting
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Reed Anfinson<br />
Publisher<br />
Swift County Monitor-News</p>
<p> “I just wanted to find out if I can show up or not?” rural Danvers resident Mark Hughes told the Swift County Board of Commissioners at their meeting last week.</p>
<p>
Hughes was referring to a meeting of the Community Perspective Committee established by the commissioners at their May 7 meeting. It consists of two members appointed from each of the five county commission districts. It was formed in response to strong citizen opposition to a proposed $17.5 million justice center.</p>
<p>
It was tasked with studying the reasons behind the county board’s support for the justice center and bringing back alternative recommendations for addressing problems with a projected increase in jail needs, the cost of housing prisoners in other counties, and the cost of transporting those prisoners out of the county. It was to look at the need for additional space at the Law Enforcement Center, human services and county attorney’s office. The new justice center would also house the Restorative Practices program and 6W Community Corrections.</p>
<p>
The 10-member body has now met at least five times and is getting closer to developing its recommendations for the county board. Monday night’s meeting was supposed to help it finalize some of its proposals for commissioners.</p>
<p>
At last week’s county board meeting, Benson resident Gwen Dale asked commissioners when the committee would be presenting its findings. County Board Chair Gary Hendrickx, District 1-Appleton, told her that the committee had more questions to be answered as it sought additional information from county staff and commissioners.<br />
When those questions were addressed, and the dialogue between county staff and commissioners completed, then there would be a public meeting, he said.</p>
<p>
If Dale had questions about the activities of the committee, Administrator Kelsey Baker told her she could ask her representative on the committee. “If you do have concerns, we want you to voice them to the people who are on the committee,” she told Dale. “When we meet next Monday, we can discuss them with committee members and county folks all in the same room. We can decide next Monday if we are going to have an open forum meeting after that,” Baker said.</p>
<p>
Whatever comes out of the committee meeting Monday night will have “a public side of some sort,” Hendrickx said.</p>
<p>
At this point, Hughes asked if he was allowed to attend the committee’s meeting.</p>
<p>
“There…are times when you have to have the conversations that lead to productivity, and sometimes it is very difficult for people to speak in a public forum,” Hendrickx said. “They just don’t feel comfortable. We want to make sure that everyone’s comfort is there. That is my opinion.”</p>
<p>
Commissioners Eric Rudningen, District 5-Kerkhoven, Pete Peterson, District 3-south Benson and Torning Township, Ed Pederson, District 2-north Benson and Benson Township, and Joe Fox, District 4-Hegbert Township didn’t comment on Hughes’ question. Hughes was left with the impression that Monday night’s meeting was not one that the public had a right to attend.</p>
<p>
The straight answer to Hughes’ question was that he most certainly did have a right to attend the meeting. He wouldn’t have the right to stand up and speak at the meeting, but he could listen to the discussion.</p>
<p>
Under the Minnesota Open Meeting Law (OML) all “state and local multimember governmental bodies, including committees and subcommittees, and nonprofits created by political subdivisions,” are public.</p>
<p>
The OML defines public meetings as any meeting where a “quorum or more of the governmental body is gathered—in person or by electronic means, whether or not action is taken or contemplated.” It requires that notice be given of its public meetings, including those of committees.</p>
<p>
The public “may attend and observe, and relevant materials are available to the public,” the OML states of the meetings.</p>
<p>
There are exceptions to the law. Public bodies can close a meeting for labor negotiation strategy sessions, attorney-client discussion on litigation the public body is involved with, security issues, employee reviews, and meetings where property transactions and purchase prices are going to be discussed.</p>
<p>
Clearly, under the Minnesota Open Meeting Law, Hughes had a right to attend Monday night’s meeting.</p>
<p>
Too often, in fact, most often, citizens have no idea about their rights to attend meetings or the right to public documents in front of elected officials at those meetings.</p>
<p>
Through the years we’ve covered public bodies we have seen citizens timidly wondering if they had the right to come into a room where a public body is meeting. As we have now seen with the county board’s response to Hughes, a citizen doesn’t always get a straight answer.</p>
<p>
If someone serving on a public body, or a committee appointed by a public body, feels too uncomfortable, or intimidated, with the public being present at a meeting their sentiments should never, ever, carry more weight than the public’s right to be there. The public body can lay out the ground rules for the audience at the meeting, but citizens have to attend.</p>
<p>
Citizen observation of those serving on public bodies, whether elected or appointed, helps them judge whether their concerns are being addressed and the quality of those serving on the body.</p>
<p>
Minnesota’s Open Meeting law guarantees transparency so that decisions aren’t made with citizens left in the dark on how those decisions were reached. The transparency created through the law gives citizens comfort that their elected and appointed officials are looking out for their best interests.</p>
<p>
It is essential for a community that there is a watchdog always looking out for their rights. That is what we do.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-rate field-type-fivestar field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Rate this article:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><form class="fivestar-widget" action="/taxonomy/term/5/feed" method="post" id="fivestar-custom-widget--3" accept-charset="UTF-8"><div><div class="clearfix fivestar-average-text fivestar-average-stars fivestar-form-item fivestar-default"><div class="form-item form-type-fivestar form-item-vote">
<div class="form-item form-type-select form-item-vote">
<select id="edit-vote--6" name="vote" class="form-select"><option value="-">Select rating</option><option value="20">Give it 1/5</option><option value="40">Give it 2/5</option><option value="60">Give it 3/5</option><option value="80">Give it 4/5</option><option value="100">Give it 5/5</option></select>
<div class="description"><div class="fivestar-summary fivestar-summary-average-count"><span class="average-rating">Average: <span>3.8</span></span> <span class="total-votes">(<span>14</span> votes)</span></div></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><input class="fivestar-submit form-submit" type="submit" id="edit-fivestar-submit--3" name="op" value="Rate" /><input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" value="form-dDUnZnvrj7l-vs0yrX35ia7stAQ8GHlYJGVmDvk-xXY" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="fivestar_custom_widget" />
</div></form></div></div></div>Tue, 27 Aug 2019 23:00:27 +0000admin3989 at http://swiftcountymonitor.comPushing Back Against Rural America’s Detractorshttp://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/2019/08/21/pushing-back-against-rural-america%E2%80%99s-detractors
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Reed Anfinson<br />
Publisher<br />
Swift County Monitor-News</p>
<p>When you see a headline on a story like, “The Rural America Death Spiral,” it can be dismaying, make your blood boil, and create doubts about our future. Then you have to consider the source. Axios, the publisher of the story, is based in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., about as far removed from the extraordinary diversity of America’s rural landscape as you can get. Still, it stings.</p>
<p>
“Many of the nation’s current pathologies are taking a heavy toll on the majority-white population living in rural America, which was severely impacted by the opioid crisis and has dealt with falling populations, job losses, and rising suicide rates,” Stef W. Kight and Juliet Bartz write for the news website Axios.</p>
<p>
“Let’s say you were born, grew up, and now reside in rural America,” write Stef Kight and Juliet Bartz. “Throughout your life, you have been more susceptible to poverty, lower education, illness, and even death than your urban counterparts.”</p>
<p>
These are important observations, they contend because it explains the anger and discontent in rural America, where we are disadvantaged in so many ways. President Trump was able to tap into our “malaise and discontent” based on inadequate access to education, health care, housing, and dead-end local jobs. We suffer from a brain drain as our few kids who do leave to go to college don’t come back. Too much school debt to take a poor paying job in rural America should there just happen to be one available.</p>
<p>
And it is only going to get worse in the years ahead as the rural population continues to decline due to kids moving away and more old people dying than babies being born take their toll on our small communities, the two say. The spiral will continue with one problem accentuating another as the access to quality education, medical care, and economic opportunity fade.</p>
<p>
We have more obesity in rural America, more mental health problems, more incidences of cancer, opioid addiction and diabetes, Kight and Bartz said. Of course, suicide rates are high as well since life is so miserable in rural America. They cite source after source to corroborate their litany of problems eroding rural American life.</p>
<p>
And, when we get too old to live alone there will be no place close by to care for us – we will have to leave our friends and family behind as we shuttle off to some remote facility. (We know this isn’t true locally with Scandi Haven Village.)</p>
<p>
We are in trouble, too, because our ability to influence those in Washington, D.C., and our state legislatures to implement policies to revitalize rural America is declining. Also, they’ve already wasted too much money trying to help us out.</p>
<p>
“States, municipalities and the federal government have spent billions to draw jobs and prosperity to stagnant rural areas. But not much has changed,” they write. Well, maybe that is because the programs are too small and too limited in the kinds of support they offer rural America.</p>
<p>
Our current depressing state of affairs led the largely white, uneducated, and desperate in rural America to vote for Donald Trump in 2016. However, that won’t matter much longer as we continue to lose population and political clout – the metropolitan areas of the nation will eventually have the power to override and dismiss the influence, and needs of rural people.</p>
<p>
We are certain there are places in rural America with such depressing accumulation of maladies as Kight and Bartz gathered, but then we also know they have painted all of rural America with an overbroad brush. There are stark differences between rural Minnesota and the rural South. The rural West faces different challenges than the rural East. Geography, history, education, and the involvement (or lack of it) of state governments in partnerships with rural areas define so much of our current state of affairs and future.</p>
<p>
Kight and Bartz don’t just ignore regional differences, they ignore the individual ingenuity, work ethic, and dynamics of so much of rural America. Though they bring up the challenges we facing, their overbroad conclusions overlook the individuality of our communities.</p>
<p>
“Our simple answer to Kight and Bartz is that if it’s such a living hell out here, why is it so much fun? Why do we get such a feeling of belonging and purpose and community?” the staff of the Daily Yonder, a web site with excellent coverage of the issues facing rural as well as the all the good things we are doing in faces the challenges we face.</p>
<p>
“We also might ask Axios why kids growing up in rural America do much better than kids who grow up in the bustling, high tech, whiz-bang cities of tomorrow. Kids from poor families growing up in rural areas have a better ‘chance’ than kids from similar families in urban areas. They are less likely to go to prison. They are more likely to form families. And they earn higher incomes,” they write. These observations come from a Harvard University’s studied entitled: “Rural areas produce better outcomes.”</p>
<p>
They also make another observation that highlights the advantages of living in rural America. Metropolitan areas of the country were always stratified to some degree between the areas where the poor, the rich and the working middle class lived. Race also separates where we live. We have assumed some of those barriers are breaking down. They aren’t. In fact, they are getting more entrenched.</p>
<p>
“Over the last forty years US cities have experienced a profound transformation in their socioeconomic structure: poor and rich families have become increasingly spatially separated over time,” Bill Bishop of the Daily Yonder writes.</p>
<p>
The economists who wrote the study on the growing separation point out that the growing inequality leads to less opportunity for poor children and minorities.</p>
<p>
“This is one of the reasons rural kids do better than urban kids,” he writes. “Neighborhoods in rural areas are less segregated economically. We all go to the same school, vote in the same precinct and shop in the same stores.</p>
<p>
We do have to recognize the challenges rural America faces and continue to work to see programs implemented at the state and federal levels that can make real differences in addressing housing, education, health, and economic development efforts.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-rate field-type-fivestar field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Rate this article:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><form class="fivestar-widget" action="/taxonomy/term/5/feed" method="post" id="fivestar-custom-widget--4" accept-charset="UTF-8"><div><div class="clearfix fivestar-average-text fivestar-average-stars fivestar-form-item fivestar-default"><div class="form-item form-type-fivestar form-item-vote">
<div class="form-item form-type-select form-item-vote">
<select id="edit-vote--8" name="vote" class="form-select"><option value="-">Select rating</option><option value="20">Give it 1/5</option><option value="40">Give it 2/5</option><option value="60">Give it 3/5</option><option value="80">Give it 4/5</option><option value="100">Give it 5/5</option></select>
<div class="description"><div class="fivestar-summary fivestar-summary-average-count"><span class="average-rating">Average: <span>4.8</span></span> <span class="total-votes">(<span>4</span> votes)</span></div></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><input class="fivestar-submit form-submit" type="submit" id="edit-fivestar-submit--4" name="op" value="Rate" /><input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" value="form-Rp0FnAafWZffipRy5BvJx3WGFmzhJTErcJ4ro6kLZCM" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="fivestar_custom_widget" />
</div></form></div></div></div>Wed, 21 Aug 2019 16:15:18 +0000admin3973 at http://swiftcountymonitor.comTrust In Short Supply In Americahttp://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/2019/08/14/trust-short-supply-america
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Reed Anfinson<br />
Publisher<br />
Swift County Monitor-News</p>
<p> “Trust is an essential elixir for public life and neighborly relations, and when Americans think about trust these days, they worry.” That was key finding in a report written by Lee Rainie, Scott Keeter And Andrew Perrin for the Pew Research Center titled: Trust and Distrust in America.</p>
<p>
Trust in our government is a near historic low, Pew’s study says. But that is no surprise when 76 percent of Americans think a low level of trust in the federal government is justified.</p>
<p>
We are also less trusting of one another with Americans saying that people just aren’t as reliable as they once were. Pew’s study also found that those who don’t trust other people have less trust in our public institutions.</p>
<p>
We’ve lost faith in our federal government’s ability to solve our problems, we’ve lost faith in our elected leaders willingness to make the tough choices that lead to solving our greatest challenges, and we don’t think our fellow citizens are engaged or educated enough to make intelligent decisions when they go to the voting booth. According to Pew’s study, we think these trends are getting worse rather than better.</p>
<p>
Pew’s study found that, “Many ascribe shrinking trust to a political culture they believe is broken and spawns suspicion, even cynicism, about the ability of others to distinguish fact from fiction.”</p>
<p>
We have lost our common understanding of the challenges we face as our media, primarily television and social media, have become toxically partisan. For those who watch Fox News, and its stable of inflammatory commentators, distrust of fellow citizens, those who are different in how they worship and in the color of their skin, our government and our press is heightened.</p>
<p>
We also don’t think our fellow citizens are very open-minded. Half of Americans have little or no confidence that others will would reconsider their point of view on an issue when presented with new evidence. Nearly 60 percent have no confidence that adults can have a civil conversation about politics with people who have opposing views.<br />
In today’s internet world where conspiracy theirs, political propaganda, foreign meddling and the malicious spreading of disinformation, it is no surprise that a “significant” number of us have trouble sorting truth from falsehood.</p>
<p>
“Americans say they think there are direct connections between rising distrust and other trends they perceived as major problems, such as partisan paralysis in government, the outsize influence of lobbyists and moneyed interests, confusion arising from made-up news and information, declining ethics in government, the intractability of immigration and climate debates, rising health care costs and a widening gap between the rich and the poor,” the study says.</p>
<p>
As worry grows over the lack of trust pervading our society, it also isn’t a surprise that nearly 70 percent of Americans think it is “very important” to restore public faith fellow citizens and our government.</p>
<p>
But how? Americans are becoming more divided, more polarized, and angrier in their points of view. We have a president whose popularity is immersed and founded on sowing division.</p>
<p>
We have fewer ways to build trust with one another as we fail to build bonds through belonging to social organizations, sports teams, and through community participation.</p>
<p>
“We’ve stopped doing committee work, stopped serving as officers, and stopped going to meetings…. In short, Americans have been dropping out in droves, not merely from political life, but from organized community life generally,” Robert D. Putnam writes in his book Bowling Alone. “Year after year, fewer and fewer of us (take) part in the everyday deliberations that constitute grassroots democracy.”</p>
<p>
It is through the social connections we build with people in serving on committees and boards, in volunteering for community events, through participation on a bowling or volleyball teams, that we create bonds that build trust. It is through our connections with people we build toward establish a common purpose, common goals, and through which we learn to work side-by-side with someone who is different from us. When share meals, entertainment, successes and failures, with people we build bonds.</p>
<p>
“We come from all the divisions, ranks and classes of society…to teach and to be taught in our turn. While we mingle together in these pursuits, we shall learn to know each other more intimately; we shall remove many of the prejudices which ignorance or partial acquaintance with each other has fostered. We may return to our homes and firesides with kindlier feelings toward one another, because we have learned to know one another better.” These words by Thomas Green at a Lyceum program in New Bedford, Mass in 1829 are as true today as they were 190 years ago. However, it is not the message we are hearing today.</p>
<p>
Too often these days we are isolated and in that isolation we lose faith and trust in our fellow citizens. We see too much of our role in the community, state and nation as one of an individual looking for what we can get rather than a citizen looking to serve.</p>
<p>
When Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, three of the giants among the nation’s founding fathers, were tasked with coming up with a seal and motto for the newly-formed United States, their eventual compromise led to the motto “E Pluribus Unum” - Out of Many, One.</p>
<p>
Surprisingly, despite the pessimistic view of America’s falling in trust in our government, our press, and one another, there is hope that we are better than our doubts. “Fully 84% believe the level of confidence Americans have in the federal government can be improved, and 86% think improvement is possible when it comes to the confidence Americans have in each other,” the Pew study says. To realize that renewed trust will not be easy in today’s political and social climate.</p>
<p>
Rural life may hold a key to renewed trust and faith in government, and one another. Small towns are places where the social capital needed to build the bonds that allow us to trust in one another and get things done can be nurtured.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-rate field-type-fivestar field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Rate this article:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><form class="fivestar-widget" action="/taxonomy/term/5/feed" method="post" id="fivestar-custom-widget--5" accept-charset="UTF-8"><div><div class="clearfix fivestar-average-text fivestar-average-stars fivestar-form-item fivestar-default"><div class="form-item form-type-fivestar form-item-vote">
<div class="form-item form-type-select form-item-vote">
<select id="edit-vote--10" name="vote" class="form-select"><option value="-">Select rating</option><option value="20">Give it 1/5</option><option value="40">Give it 2/5</option><option value="60">Give it 3/5</option><option value="80">Give it 4/5</option><option value="100">Give it 5/5</option></select>
<div class="description"><div class="fivestar-summary fivestar-summary-average-count"><span class="average-rating">Average: <span>3.7</span></span> <span class="total-votes">(<span>3</span> votes)</span></div></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><input class="fivestar-submit form-submit" type="submit" id="edit-fivestar-submit--5" name="op" value="Rate" /><input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" value="form-KG1rZ82Bm9khut0msUiAaVFM2KWOk8J43iWkMHWvoB0" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="fivestar_custom_widget" />
</div></form></div></div></div>Wed, 14 Aug 2019 14:22:12 +0000admin3960 at http://swiftcountymonitor.comReaping What You Sowhttp://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/2019/08/08/reaping-what-you-sow
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Reed Anfinson<br />
Publisher<br />
Swift County Monitor-News</p>
<p>“If I learned anything from 25 years in the F.B.I., including a stint as head of counterintelligence, it was to trust my gut when I see a threat unfolding,” Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant F.B.I. director for counterintelligence, wrote in a piece published in the New York Times July 31 – four days before the shooting in El Paso.</p>
<p>
“Now, instinct and experience tell me we’re headed for trouble in the form of white hate violence stoked by a racially divisive president. I hope I’m wrong.” He wasn’t.</p>
<p>
Figliuzzi also pointed out that since last October the Federal Bureau of Investigation had made 90 domestic terrorism arrests. We don’t hear about these cases because the FBI gets to those potential terrorists before they can act. There were roughly as many domestic terrorism arrests in that period as there were foreign threat arrests. Of the FBI’s 850 pending domestic terror investigations, about 40 percent involve racially motivated extremism, Figliuzzi says.</p>
<p>
Many of President Donald Trump’s ardent supporters say it is unfair to affix any of the blame for the shooting in El Paso onto him. It was the act of a deranged white supremacist, they say. This is only partially true. They ignore a long trail of the president’s words and actions if they think the blame ends with this shooter.</p>
<p>
Remember Trump’s words at his rally in Panama City, Florida, May 8?</p>
<p>
“This is an invasion!” Trump said of immigrants at the U.S. border. “When you see these caravans starting out with 20,000 people. That is an invasion. I was badly criticized for using the word ‘invasion.’ It is an invasion. But how do you stop these people?”</p>
<p>
“Shoot them!” a person in the crowd yells.</p>
<p>
“You can’t…” the president starts to say, then stops and smiles as the words register. He shakes his head with a smirk on his face and the crowd laughs. “That is only in the Panhandle that you can get away with that statement.” He then stands back from the microphone as people cheer, whistle, laugh and clap. “Only in the Panhandle.” He basks in the crowd’s jubilation over shooting immigrants.</p>
<p>
In the months running up to his election and in the two-and-half-years since Trump has repeatedly used race and religion to divide and polarize Americans. He has called Hispanic immigrants rapists, murders, breeders, animals, disease carriers, and their coming to America an infestation. What do you do with infestations? His dehumanizing language makes those who would consider violence against them a justified action because they are a threat and less than human.</p>
<p>
At a July rally in Grenville, NC, he listened to chants of “send her back” directed at Minnesota freshman Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar. Omar is a naturalized U.S. citizen who came here with her family as a child and a vocal critic of Trump. He also attacked three American-born Democratic members of congress U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) who is black, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) who is Hispanic, and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) a Muslim. “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he tweeted.</p>
<p>
He has recently attacked black U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings saying his home district in Baltimore is “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” He expressed sarcastic remorse when he heard Cummings’ home was burglarized last week, saying it was “too bad.”</p>
<p>
During a march of neo-Nazi’s and white supremacists who in Charlottesville, VA, in August 2017, there were violent clashes between them and those who opposed their message. In the aftermath of the violence, Trump said he was sure there “were very fine people” marching with the neo-Nazis and white supremacists. His words empowered the leaders of the hate groups.</p>
<p>
He has praised assaults on reporters and called them the “enemy of the people.” He encourages violence at rallies. “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell ... I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise,” he said Feb. 1, 2016.</p>
<p>
Such bravado, to the screaming cheers of his crowds, seen on television and on the internet, reaches into the troubled minds of those who are at the unstable edge where they can be incited to action.</p>
<p>
Monday morning he read a prepared piece to reporters on the shootings in El Paso and Dayton. “In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” Trump said without emotion. He also warned of “the perils of the internet and social media.”</p>
<p>
Staff-drafted political pieces meant to calm the blow back from his comments at rallies over the past years mean little coming from someone you know doesn’t feel it in his heart. It’s the politically calculated thing to do for now. He will tone down his inflammatory remarks at his rallies for a while, but these shootings will soon fade from his memory and he will again incite his crowds with racist comments. He craves the adulation that they bring him from his adoring supporters. It’s a drug for him.</p>
<p>
Trump didn’t endorse any gun control measures that Democrats have been seeking such as universal background checks for gun and ammunition buyers, banning the sale of assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, and barring those with mental health issues from having guns in his speech. While he spoke of the nation’s responsibilities, he never used the word “I.” He distanced himself from responsibility by talking in the third person.</p>
<p>
Prior to going to the El Paso WalMart the shooter posted a 2,300-word manifesto online saying “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” His words echoed Trump’s. The El Paso shooter is reported to have told investigators he wanted to “shoot as many Mexicans as he could.” Though he said he wasn’t a Democrat or Republican in his manifesto, he later said Texas would go democratic because more Hispanics were invading America.</p>
<p>
“Presidents play a role in this country of not just consoling, but of setting a tone,” presidential historian John Meacham said on the MSNBC’s Morning Joe program Monday. “And for the last two and a half years (Trump’s role) is unacceptable.” It’s far more than unacceptable, it threatens the safety of every American.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-rate field-type-fivestar field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Rate this article:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><form class="fivestar-widget" action="/taxonomy/term/5/feed" method="post" id="fivestar-custom-widget--6" accept-charset="UTF-8"><div><div class="clearfix fivestar-average-text fivestar-average-stars fivestar-form-item fivestar-default"><div class="form-item form-type-fivestar form-item-vote">
<div class="form-item form-type-select form-item-vote">
<select id="edit-vote--12" name="vote" class="form-select"><option value="-">Select rating</option><option value="20">Give it 1/5</option><option value="40">Give it 2/5</option><option value="60">Give it 3/5</option><option value="80">Give it 4/5</option><option value="100">Give it 5/5</option></select>
<div class="description"><div class="fivestar-summary fivestar-summary-average-count"><span class="average-rating">Average: <span>3.7</span></span> <span class="total-votes">(<span>9</span> votes)</span></div></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><input class="fivestar-submit form-submit" type="submit" id="edit-fivestar-submit--6" name="op" value="Rate" /><input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" value="form-iR0phWWgLG9qJRr-0n7O_ydDwYWtW2FznxacHE7133E" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="fivestar_custom_widget" />
</div></form></div></div></div>Thu, 08 Aug 2019 14:13:13 +0000admin3940 at http://swiftcountymonitor.comGot Milky Way?http://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/2019/08/01/got-milky-way
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Reed Anfinson<br />
Publisher<br />
Swift County Monitor-News</p>
<p>When you wish upon a star<br />
Makes no difference who you are<br />
Anything your heart desires will come to you<br />
From the Disney Movie ‘Pinocchio’</p>
<p> Meteors flaring across a night sky hold in wondrous delight a child lying on his back in the summer grass. Above is the Big Dipper and Polaris, the North Star, at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper. It’s nearing the middle of August and the Perseid meteor shower is starting to peak with as many as a dozen or more blazing across the backdrop of the Milky Way.</p>
<p>
It’s an idyllic scene. Too bad most Americans can’t share it.</p>
<p>
A 2016 study by researcher Fabio Falchi of the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute in Thiene, Italy, showed that 80 percent of the United States emits so much manmade light that it obliterates a view of the night sky. The percentage of those who can see the stars continues to shrink. And, in areas once dark, blinking red lights on cell phone towers and wind mills, mar the beauty of the night sky.</p>
<p>
Earth’s Solar System sits on one of the outer spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy. Our sun is one of an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars in the galaxy, which contains at least 100 billion planets. The hazy, milky light of those billions of far away suns shining give the galaxy its name. There are children living in American cities who may have never seen it.</p>
<p>
Around America, cities are making efforts to reduce light pollution to give their residents a better view of the night sky. In Yuma County, Arizona, county officials are considering an ordinance aimed at reducing the amount of light generated in the community. Motivation for action is coming from citizens.</p>
<p>
“Where I live right now you couldn’t pay me to move back into town, because I can sit in my yard and see millions of stars,” Supervisor Darren Simmons, who lives east of Yuma, told the Yuma Sun “And that’s why people move out into the country.”</p>
<p>
In June 2018 the Kanab City, Utah, council passed an outdoor lighting ordinance protecting the natural darkness that makes its county “a great place to see stars.”</p>
<p>
The ordinance was sponsored by the “Starry Sky Working Group” that helped educate the community on why seeing the stars at night was good policy.</p>
<p>
“Three simple but very critical provisions of the ordinance set limits on brightness, require shielding, and keep colors in the warm white part of the spectrum, at 3000 degrees Kelvin or lower,” the International Dark Sky Association reports. Aiming lights downward reduces glare and light pollution.</p>
<p>
Last year, Cook County, which includes Grand Marais and Lutsen in far northeastern Minnesota along the shores of Lake Superior, started promoting “Dark Sky Season.” It was a celebration of the night sky and the Northern Lights. Duluth’s local chapter of the International Dark Sky Association hosted a “Celebrate the Night Sky Week.”</p>
<p>
“As people realize … this is an amazing resource, this is going to continue to grow,” Randy Larson, coordinator of the event, told Pam Louwagie of the Star Tribune. “There’s huge opportunity for every community around us. … It’s just a matter of turning the lights down and turning them in a way that isn’t disruptive.”</p>
<p>
“It’s a huge waste of money. All the light that’s being sent up into the sky is just wasted light, wasted money, wasted energy,” Paul Bogard, author of “The End of Night” told Louwagie. “People who have grown up in the last 30 or 40 years and have never left the city have no idea what a real night sky is supposed to look like. … They think a couple dozen stars is a starry night.”</p>
<p>
For decades, the Campaign to Protect Rural England has fought to keep the countryside darker. It “believes that darkness at night is one of the key characteristics of rural areas and it represents a major difference between what is rural and what is urban.”</p>
<p>
“We’re concerned that, even in the depths of the countryside, genuine dark starry nights are becoming harder to find. Security lights, floodlights and streetlights all break into the darkness and create a veil of light across the night sky,” it says. Light doesn’t respect boundaries, it invades spaces, blurring the night sky, obscuring even in the brightest stars.</p>
<p>
Light pollution affects humans and the natural environment, disrupting behaviors, and negatively affecting physical and mental health. Humans don’t sleep as well; animal’s routines are interrupted with implications for their survival.</p>
<p>
“…At the very moment that the bond is breaking between the young and the natural world, a growing body of research links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association with nature – in positive ways,” Richard Louv writes in his book “Last Child in the Woods.”</p>
<p>
“The health of the earth is at stake as well,” Louv writes. “How the young respond to nature, and how they raise their own children, will shape the configurations and conditions of our cities, our homes – our daily lives,” he says.</p>
<p>
Our peace of mind, our wellbeing, is found in the contact with nature, it is found in the night sky on a summer’s eve, a crisp fall night, in bitterly cold December darkness, and in spring’s awakening. It’s found in seeing the Milky Way. The Milky Way is found in rural places, if we preserve our dark skies.</p>
<p>
“We’ve taken what was once one of the most common human experiences — walking out your door and coming face to face with the universe — and made that one of the most rare of human experiences,” Bogard said. “The night sky has inspired people forever: in science, religion, philosophy and art. And we’re losing that.”</p>
<p>
In the 1990s, Jeff Goodby created the advertising slogan “Got Milk?” It is still considered one of the most successful and remembered campaigns of all time. The ad campaign featured a host of celebrities with milk mustaches including Jessica Alba, Elton John, Angelina Jolie, Tom Brady, Steven Tyler, Ron Howard, Mike Meyers, Jeff Gordon, Spike Lee, Kermit the Frog and the Simpsons.</p>
<p>
Perhaps, if we could find the financial resources, rural American communities could start a “Got Milky Way?” campaign. Got a child? Want the child to see the amazing night sky? Want your children to grow up with a sense of wonder? Want your child to dream? Come to rural Minnesota. Get the Milky Way.</p>
<p>
Got Milky Way? We can see a child wearing that t-shirt.<br />
</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-rate field-type-fivestar field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Rate this article:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><form class="fivestar-widget" action="/taxonomy/term/5/feed" method="post" id="fivestar-custom-widget--7" accept-charset="UTF-8"><div><div class="clearfix fivestar-average-text fivestar-average-stars fivestar-form-item fivestar-default"><div class="form-item form-type-fivestar form-item-vote">
<div class="form-item form-type-select form-item-vote">
<select id="edit-vote--14" name="vote" class="form-select"><option value="-">Select rating</option><option value="20">Give it 1/5</option><option value="40">Give it 2/5</option><option value="60">Give it 3/5</option><option value="80">Give it 4/5</option><option value="100">Give it 5/5</option></select>
<div class="description"><div class="fivestar-summary fivestar-summary-average-count"><span class="empty">No votes yet</span></div></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><input class="fivestar-submit form-submit" type="submit" id="edit-fivestar-submit--7" name="op" value="Rate" /><input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" value="form-dyRpdVHJjzPxHuqllfoWN7fQe1GuavjKLjNyf6thOkw" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="fivestar_custom_widget" />
</div></form></div></div></div>Thu, 01 Aug 2019 14:04:01 +0000admin3929 at http://swiftcountymonitor.comClear Strategy Needed To See Rural Minnesota Growhttp://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/2019/07/24/clear-strategy-needed-see-rural-minnesota-grow
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Reed Anfinson<br />
Publisher<br />
Swift County Monitor-News</p>
<p>At its meeting last week, Swift County’s commissioners were a couple question every leader in rural America is being asked: What are the most critical strategic challenges the county faces?</p>
<p>
Dawn Hegland, executive director of the Upper Minnesota Valley Regional Development Commission, posed the question to our five county commissioners. The RDC serves local units of government in Swift, Chippewa, Yellow Medicine, Lac qui Parle, and Big Stone counties by assisting them with planning and economic development.</p>
<p>
“What the RDC board is asking is, what are a couple of strategic issues in the region we can help with?” Hegland requested of commissioners. She told them the RDC was willing to allocate staff time to the priorities they identified.</p>
<p>
“What are one or two things that are keeping you up at night?” Hegland asked. “As you think about the needs of the county or the needs in your jurisdiction that you represent, I would love to hear from you.”</p>
<p>
Commissioner Eric Rudningen, District 5-Kerkhoven, pointed to the struggling farm economy, hit by poor commodity prices, the Trump Administration’s tariffs, and a terrible planting season. With farmland representing nearly 75 percent of the tax capacity of Swift County, the struggles farmers are facing is foremost in the minds of commissioners as they consider tax levies. “As it gets to budget time, we are well aware of where the dollars come from to run the county. It is a difficult spot to be in,” he said.</p>
<p>
As the local governments look at the challenges they face the problem isn’t identifying them, it is coming up with solutions. “The number one problem in our society is that we spend 99 percent of our time talking about what the problem is and 1 percent of the time trying to find a solution,” he said.</p>
<p>
We would disagree with Rudningen’s summation a bit. Local leaders tend to spend 99 percent of their time talking about the problems and possible solutions, and 1 percent of the time addressing them with the solutions that have been explored. Too often there is a lack of will, focus, or support for doing what is needed to effect meaningful change even when the need is obvious and the strategy for addressing the need sound.</p>
<p>
Rudningen makes a good point stating that governments are too often reactionary rather than proactive or visionary in addressing challenges.</p>
<p>
“In the 1950s, we built this great big interstate highway system that we are all benefiting from now and there wasn’t the need for the interstate highway system in the 1950s that there is right now,” he said. “But someone was smart enough to put it together. So, how do we transition and be a more visionary governmental structure to provide for the safety and well being of the citizenry, rather than a reactionary structure?”</p>
<p>
That is a good question to reflect on for county board members. It gets back to having the will, focus, and support for taking action.</p>
<p>
For Commission Chair Gary Hendrickx, District 1-Appleton, one of the decisive challenges we face is our changing population. We can’t just acknowledge that our communities are becoming more diverse, we have to embrace that diversity. “We have to embrace it ‘cause that is the next generation,” he said. He’s right.</p>
<p>
Look at the makeup of children in our rural schools today, they are less white than they were when many of us were kids. When we see those kids laughing, playing, and studying together, we can’t help but feel that with diversity Swift County has a bright future. Yet there is resistance.</p>
<p>
Hendrickx mentioned that at a strategic planning session of the RDC there were “different opinions” on diversity being key to the area’s future. We got the distinct impression his wording was diplomatic in reflecting those different views.</p>
<p>
Our grandfather didn’t speak English until he was five. Our father spoke little Norwegian. We talked with a person of Middle Eastern heritage in Chicago in early July and asked him if his children were bilingual. He replied they weren’t. They grew up speaking English. All three daughters are now either college graduates or in college. They are the future of America.</p>
<p>
Commissioner Pete Peterson, District 3 south Benson, and Torning Township, agreed the farm economy was the single biggest challenge. “It is in the basement; let’s face it folks,” Peterson said. Raising taxes to cover the increasing costs of government is difficult for county government in such times. “It really comes down to the money for me. It has got to be our economy; that is the main issue,” Peterson said. It’s the obvious answer, but overbroad for the RDC to act on.</p>
<p>
Commissioners Joe Fox, District 4-Hegbert Township, and Ed Pederson, District 2-north Benson and Benson Township, didn’t offer any comments. We find that troubling. Local leaders must be ready to clearly articulate their vision for county growth and how to meet the challenges we face.</p>
<p>
In reporting on local governments, we see two different approaches to the challenges that face rural Minnesota, Swift County, and Benson. One approach comes from a perspective of what it takes to keep local government working. This is the short-sighted approach.</p>
<p>
Yes, we need the underlying infrastructure of good roads, adequate law enforcement, and working sewer and water systems, but without addressing the challenges that lead to a declining population that infrastructure will be paid for by a steadily declining number of citizens, farmers and businesses.</p>
<p>
If we don’t address the issues of what draws young families to rural Minnesota and keeps them here, what we are doing about our housing needs, if our schools attractive and respected, do we have a good health care system, and what types of economic development projects we are willing to back, we are simply managing decline rather than employing a strategy against it.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-rate field-type-fivestar field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Rate this article:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><form class="fivestar-widget" action="/taxonomy/term/5/feed" method="post" id="fivestar-custom-widget--8" accept-charset="UTF-8"><div><div class="clearfix fivestar-average-text fivestar-average-stars fivestar-form-item fivestar-default"><div class="form-item form-type-fivestar form-item-vote">
<div class="form-item form-type-select form-item-vote">
<select id="edit-vote--16" name="vote" class="form-select"><option value="-">Select rating</option><option value="20">Give it 1/5</option><option value="40">Give it 2/5</option><option value="60">Give it 3/5</option><option value="80">Give it 4/5</option><option value="100">Give it 5/5</option></select>
<div class="description"><div class="fivestar-summary fivestar-summary-average-count"><span class="empty">No votes yet</span></div></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><input class="fivestar-submit form-submit" type="submit" id="edit-fivestar-submit--8" name="op" value="Rate" /><input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" value="form-IYQaRhyznFWor0h4rmnOZyAWRnrxEqoRTPTcEH_3kUE" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="fivestar_custom_widget" />
</div></form></div></div></div>Wed, 24 Jul 2019 13:52:08 +0000admin3915 at http://swiftcountymonitor.comPledge Debate A Time For Reflectionhttp://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/2019/07/17/pledge-debate-time-reflection
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Reed Anfinson<br />
Publisher<br />
Swift County Monitor-News</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Few issues separate people’s core beliefs as to what defines patriotism at a visceral level than the subjects of burning an American flag, not standing for the National Anthem, or a city council deciding to drop the of Allegiance from the start of its meetings.</p>
<p>
The St. Louis Park City Council learned this first hand in the past few weeks after considering dropping the Pledge of Allegiance from its meetings. Some citizens were outraged; others shrugged. But fueled by President Trump’s input, the outraged let loose on the council.</p>
<p>
“The Pledge of Allegiance to our great Country, in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, is under siege. That is why I am going to win the Great State of Minnesota in the 2020 Election. People are sick and tired of this stupidity and disloyalty to our wonderful USA!” Trump Tweeted July 11. His Tweet lit up social media with vitriolic condemnation of the council, calls for a boycott of St. Louis Park, and the ouster of the council.</p>
<p>
Monday night the council unanimously agreed to keep recitation of the pledge at the start of its meetings.</p>
<p>
Why would the council even consider dropping the pledge?</p>
<p>
Council Member Anne Mavity told KARE 11 that she raised the idea at a meeting in the interests of recognizing the diversity in the Twin Cities suburban community.</p>
<p>
“Not everyone who does business with the city or has a conversation is a citizen,” she said. “They certainly don’t need to come into city council chambers and pledge their allegiance to our country in order to tell us what their input is about a sidewalk in front of their home.”</p>
<p>
She told Minnesota Public Radio that, “To me, saying the Pledge of Allegiance is not the barometer on patriotism.” Supporters of the pledge disagreed.</p>
<p>
“Unfortunately, some of us feel like patriotism has been so politicized that it’s almost used as a weapon against people,” St. Louis City Council Member Tim Brausen told The Washington Post. In other places, there have been objections to saying the pledge based on religious grounds due to its “under God” line.</p>
<p>
There is a great irony in the Trump and the political right’s outrage over St. Louis Park considering dropping the pledge in acknowledgement of the growing diversity of its community. The first irony is that Francis Bellamy, writer of the original wording of the Pledge of Allegiance, was a Christian Socialist. He believed strongly in addressing social and economic injustice. We doubt anyone with the word “socialist” attached to his cause today could get the words of the pledge adopted yet alone recited in schools and at public meetings. We certainly know that addressing social injustice is not a top priority for our president.</p>
<p>
The second irony is that Bellamy saw the pledge as a way to help the increasing number of immigrants coming to America assimilate into our culture.</p>
<p>
“Bellamy and other social gospel advocates anticipated that a ‘well-organized and patriotic public education system’ would inculcate newcomers with American ideals and values,” Charles Dorn, associate dean for academic affairs and a professor of education at Bowdoin College, wrote in 2017 in a piece about Bellamy.<br />
We know that Trump and the Republican Party are not looking at ways to help immigrants in America become one with us. Rather, their policies are aimed at building walls and deportations.</p>
<p>
Finally, Bellamy didn’t write the pledge in 1898 out of an overdeveloped sense of patriotism. </p>
<p>
“Francis Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance partly as a marketing scheme,” Dorn writes. “The Youth’s Companion, one of the first weekly magazines in the nation to target both adults and their children, hired Bellamy to develop promotional strategies for commemorating—and profiting from—the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to America.” They would sell a bunch of flags to go along with the celebration. Bellamy’s pledge written for the Columbus Day observance was aimed at students assembled at their schools who would recite it as they saluted the flag.</p>
<p>
Since Bellamy wrote the pledge, it has changed wording a couple times. His pledge read: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The popularity of his words soon took off with states across the country requiring students to recite them.</p>
<p>
The words “under God” weren’t added until 1954 when the U.S. was involved in the Cold War with the “godless” communists in the Soviet Union. In 1940, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that there were no religious exceptions for not saying the pledge and the states could compel students to recite it. The Jehovah’s Witnesses had argued it violated their religious beliefs in that it required worship of a graven image.</p>
<p>
The Supreme Court’s ruling wouldn’t stand for long. Just three years later the Court ruled in the West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnett case that the “Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment protects students from being forced to salute the American flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance in public school.”</p>
<p>
As Americans recite the pledge, Dorn writes that “we would benefit from listening to the words of Justice Robert Jackson, who delivered the opinion for the majority in the West Virginia case on Flag Day in 1943: ‘If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.’”</p>
<p>
We fly the American flag in front of our house in the summertime. We are proud of it. We have been properly schooled to stand for the National Anthem. At Benson City Council meetings, we place our hand over our heart as we stand to recite the pledge.</p>
<p>
We come from a privileged community, personally inexperienced with the cauldron of injustice in which others have baked. It is an ignorance that leaves us cautious in judging the protests of those who have suffered pervasive, brutal, injustices as they plead for America to live up to its pledge of “liberty and justice for all.”</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-rate field-type-fivestar field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Rate this article:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><form class="fivestar-widget" action="/taxonomy/term/5/feed" method="post" id="fivestar-custom-widget--9" accept-charset="UTF-8"><div><div class="clearfix fivestar-average-text fivestar-average-stars fivestar-form-item fivestar-default"><div class="form-item form-type-fivestar form-item-vote">
<div class="form-item form-type-select form-item-vote">
<select id="edit-vote--18" name="vote" class="form-select"><option value="-">Select rating</option><option value="20">Give it 1/5</option><option value="40">Give it 2/5</option><option value="60">Give it 3/5</option><option value="80">Give it 4/5</option><option value="100">Give it 5/5</option></select>
<div class="description"><div class="fivestar-summary fivestar-summary-average-count"><span class="average-rating">Average: <span>5</span></span> <span class="total-votes">(<span>1</span> vote)</span></div></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><input class="fivestar-submit form-submit" type="submit" id="edit-fivestar-submit--9" name="op" value="Rate" /><input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" value="form-traNZRzb8kqyftGeI8jAr9sJWMfnKdLiC51abu7RD1s" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="fivestar_custom_widget" />
</div></form></div></div></div>Wed, 17 Jul 2019 15:57:13 +0000admin3899 at http://swiftcountymonitor.comReality, Challenge, Set In With Fibrominn Demolitionhttp://swiftcountymonitor.com/articles/2019/07/10/reality-challenge-set-fibrominn-demolition
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Reed Anfinson<br />
Publisher<br />
Swift County Monitor-News</p>
<p>A 12-year-old $230 million energy facility employing more than 40 people and paying $821,000 in real estate taxes to local governments would seem to be an economic plus for a community and have a bright future.</p>
<p>
But times change and these days that change can be incredibly rapid. Biomass was the new power source of the future that was going to end U.S. reliance on foreign oil and gas in the late 1990s and early 2000s.</p>
<p>
Now Fibrominn, which later became Benson Power, is gradually being deconstructed by St. Michael firm Rachel Contracting. A friend told us he had talked with one of the workers who said it was the newest building he had ever torn down. The 55-megawatt power plant fueled by turkey litter and wood chips couldn’t compete on the open energy market.</p>
<p>
New drilling technology and methods, along with the discovery of vast oil reserves in the Bakken Oil Field in northwestern North Dakota, have made America one of the world’s largest producers of oil. Natural gas supplies, once tight, are now abundant.</p>
<p>
Technological evolution and innovation have made solar and wind a rapidly growing source of power for energy companies, making biomass obsolete and far too expensive as a source to generate electricity.</p>
<p>
At the 2005 groundbreaking for the plant then Gov. Tim Pawlenty praised Benson and Fibrominn.</p>
<p>
“In the days of the California gold rush they used to say, ‘There is gold in them thar hills,’” he told the crowd. “Today we are saying there is gold in that thar manure.”</p>
<p>
“We are so glad that you are gathered here today along with guests from Maryland, North Carolina, Texas, and Mississippi, from countries around the world, France, Spain and the U.K. and many other places to help celebrate and acknowledge the formal groundbreaking and opening of this fantastic facility.</p>
<p>
“This plant is a world-leading, cutting-edge technologically advanced example of not just biomass energy, but some of the best thinking, the best technology, and best leadership the world has to offer and it is right here in Benson, Minnesota, and that is wonderful,” Pawlenty said.</p>
<p>
At the May 2007 dedication of the plant, U.S. 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson also had high praise for the community.</p>
<p>
“There is a long tradition in this part of the world of progressive politics and progressive leaders. It is appropriate that this would be the place where we would have this kind of revolution. You have the Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company (CVEC) across the road that is doing some tremendous stuff in getting to the front of moving to cellulosic ethanol using biomass for synfuel. I am so proud of this area’s…leaders,” he told the crowd.</p>
<p>
When he served in the U.S. Senate, Norm Coleman made an effort to visit all 87 Minnesota counties. In December 2007, he came to Benson.</p>
<p>
“I saved the best for last,” Coleman told a small crowd gathered in the Benson City Council chambers. “Benson is a pretty remarkable town. Here in the heartland of western Minnesota, you are at the forefront of energy innovation.</p>
<p>
“We started with ethanol, that provided the foundation and educated folks about the opportunity that can be created with alternative energy,” Coleman said. “Ethanol is still the mainstay. But now we have turkey litter and biomass, and we will be unleashing the potential of cellulosic (fuel production) at some point.”</p>
<p>
Minnesota’s Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) estimated Fibrominn would bring $8 to $10 million in annual economic activity to the community.</p>
<p>
We weren’t alone in seeking the Fibrominn plant. More than 30 other Minnesota communities were also doing their best to be the site of the plant. Benson won the competition due to its extraordinary leadership on the council and its staff.</p>
<p>
For us, the demolition of Fibrominn is bittersweet.</p>
<p>
We made two trips to England to view, and smell, the proposed Fibrominn plant for Benson. The overwhelming concern was that it would stink up the town and be just the opposite of the economic development stimulus our community was seeking. We talked to the people in Thetford and Croxton; both close to the Thetford Fibrowatt plant that was burning poultry litter to create electricity. We met with the local newspaper editor of the Thetford Times. We wandered the streets of downtown Thetford, along with other representatives of Benson and Swift County, talking with local people about the impact of the plant on their community.</p>
<p>
What our experiences told us was that the plant would not smell and that it would provide new jobs along with a substantial boost to our tax base.</p>
<p>
In his speech to Benson, Gov. Pawlenty also quoted futurist Peter Drucker who said, “The things that got us here will not get us there.”</p>
<p>
He went on to say, “Drucker said the best way to predict the future is to go out and invent it yourself. There is a lot of wisdom in that statement. So the town of Benson and its partners, and this region are seizing the future, inventing it themselves. Rather than have events and circumstances just come and plow into them, they are creating a future that is forward-looking, that has momentum, that brings capital investment and jobs to greater Minnesota which are desperately needed.”</p>
<p>
Pawlenty’s quoting of Drucker was unintentionally prescient in that he would have never suspected that Fibrominn’s time would end so soon.</p>
<p>
Benson is receiving $20 million from Xcel Energy over four years with $10.5 million already in the bank to pursue its next innovative economic development project. It’s compensation for the early closing of the power plant that was contracted to run through 2028.</p>
<p>
Brightmark Energy might be part of Benson’s future. Whether it is or not, the community must keep moving forward. We’ve made strides with having economic development specialist Doug Griffiths come to Benson, with a greater investment in economic development planning staff, and with a three-day community strategy session involving community leaders that laid out priorities and plans for pursuing future opportunities.</p>
<p>
Our challenge is to keep the momentum alive.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-rate field-type-fivestar field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Rate this article:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><form class="fivestar-widget" action="/taxonomy/term/5/feed" method="post" id="fivestar-custom-widget--10" accept-charset="UTF-8"><div><div class="clearfix fivestar-average-text fivestar-average-stars fivestar-form-item fivestar-default"><div class="form-item form-type-fivestar form-item-vote">
<div class="form-item form-type-select form-item-vote">
<select id="edit-vote--20" name="vote" class="form-select"><option value="-">Select rating</option><option value="20">Give it 1/5</option><option value="40">Give it 2/5</option><option value="60">Give it 3/5</option><option value="80">Give it 4/5</option><option value="100">Give it 5/5</option></select>
<div class="description"><div class="fivestar-summary fivestar-summary-average-count"><span class="average-rating">Average: <span>5</span></span> <span class="total-votes">(<span>1</span> vote)</span></div></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><input class="fivestar-submit form-submit" type="submit" id="edit-fivestar-submit--10" name="op" value="Rate" /><input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" value="form-w_TalPOVCyBe9LBlZPAMLU4UCXhZVImT6TrfE3Fs5z4" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="fivestar_custom_widget" />
</div></form></div></div></div>Wed, 10 Jul 2019 19:01:32 +0000admin3886 at http://swiftcountymonitor.com